Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters Club (#8141): September 2012

Meeting #257, 11th September 2012

It was 11^th September 2012, many people remember this date in memory of terrorist attack on twin tower attack on world trade center attack in New York USA. As people gathered in ground zero in memory of incident of those who lost their lives, there is a group of people gathering together at Bangunan MCA PJ Selatan, Lorong 8/1D Petaling Jaya. These people are the members of Money Mastery-KL Toastmasters club.

You can see the acceleration of excitement of this group of people by the fact some of them were there as early 6pm. Oh! Yes, they have come to set up the room. Anyone walking into the hall can immediately sense that this is the hall of fame that is turning men and women to better speakers and leaders of tomorrow.

Its almost 6.30pm and the food is laid out with our local food, as usual there was “nasi lemak”, and other local delicacies, well this time we got from a different stall to taste another variety. As members enjoyed the food in the welcome room the sound of greetings and laughter could be heard.

The sound of the hammer was heard at 7pm, it was over Sergeant At Arms, TM Kyle Kuah, calling for the meeting to order and there were seated all the members in a U-shaped pattern of sitting arrangement in the meeting hall. He introduces the house rules and led the group in the recital of “A Toastmaster’s Promise”. The President ACS, ACB Ken Chan walks up with his face beaming with smile as the sergeant at arms invited him.

The President welcomed our distinguished guest ACB, CL Alex Lu the general evaluator and welcomed all in a few words quoting the theme of the day “Merge to Create”. He looked at the Grammarian CC Kelvin Chong and invited him to introduce the word of the day. Kelvin shot in the word 'Synergy' as the word of the day, with its meaning interaction of elements combined to produce a total effect greater than the sum of the individual element. He quoted the example that we can develop synergy for the club when members cooperate and work together as a team. At the presidents invitation each member began to introduce themselves as everyone acknowledged each other with applause on hearing the other speak.

Soon we hear the voice in the meeting hall as changed, it is Toastmaster of the Evening, TM Mathew Philippose who has taken control of the meeting at the invitation of the President. He stressed on the theme “Merge to Create" and added that the phrase was first quoted in the Merging Plan for the formation of Malaysia. He said when we merge we add our resources and strength together, so in MM-KL TMC its growth is totally dependent on senior and the newer members coming together to form a synergy to create leaders of tomarrow. With that note he introduced the role-players with each reading out the function in the meeting.

The Toastmaster of the Evening invited Table Topics Master CC,CL Hj Hashim Adnan. The Table Topics Master did something different he started a story of meeting US President Obama in the lift and standing next to him Ken Chan, his unique conversation with Obama was to continue with a story. Interestingly enough the platform taken by TM Mathew, ACB Alex Lu; CC Kelvin Chong; ACS, ALB Ken Chan and finally TM Ron Yeap all made the story spin from politics to rationalization what a synergy.

The meeting saw a combination of speeches from both the competent communication and advanced communication manual. The first speaker was TM Kyle Kuah on speech topic “Your Body Speaks” with his title ABORTION. His speech portrayed the audience as a judge between the right and wrong, morality, religion common sense and necessity of negativity to the topic. As the audience was moved he concluded with the statement "When comes to human is abortion when it comes to chicken it is omelet".

The next speaker TM Ron Yeap spotting with a suite and a smiling face came with his research topic “Smoking Kills”. His power point slides attracted the audience and he further captivated them by taking a cigarette and demonstrating smoking. He hammered the point that what is found as ingredient in the stick of cigarette are harmful. He quoted as examples of items found in nail polish and rat poison.

The scene changed with CC Serena Kong taking the platform with a touching story titled story “Going Home”. She illustrated the complexity of a woman as a mother and grandmother and how aging has left the grandma lost in a city trying to find her way home as she is lost. She took the story to a climax and ended it with the question if such is the love of a grandma searching to fulfill the desire of her children, do we think of going home to see our parents to show our love to them in return.

As Serena ended the speech the place was rocked hearing the sound from podium. It was the voice of the toastmaster of the evening reading the introduction to a public speech. He shifted the audience to the steps of Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which was a defining moment of the American Civil rights Movement. As the Toastmaster of the Evening invited ACS, ALB Ken Chan, suddenly a voice thundered as the voice from Lincoln Memorial it was Martin Luther King Jr public speech read by ACS, ALB Ken Chan who gave the glamour to the audience to experience this great event in reality.

The prepared speeches were followed with a break of food and fellowship together to little over ten minutes. The Sergeant At Arms, TM Kyle Kuah sounded the hammer as all eyes were seated watching the hand over of the meeting to the Toastmaster of the Eveningm TM Mathew Philippose. The Toastmaster pointed out its time to have breakfast for champions, as everyone acknowledged it was the evaluation time he invited the General Evaluator, ACB, CL Alex Lu to take over the evaluation session. The audience was fed well with feedback from CC EK Yeo who played two roles both evaluations for table topics session and TM Kyle Kuah's speech. As he gave his interesting evaluations, there were smiles of eagerness to see how the dissections of the speeches were done. As he was applauded the next evaluator CC Kelvin Chong was called to take the platform. As usual with his beaming face with smile and with a clear voice he graded TM Ron Yeap, helping the audience to learn even further.

One cannot miss the next evaluator CC, CL Haji Hashim Adnan who when he was called to the platform came with a look of authority and confidence as he peeled the speech by CC Serena Kong to be a good learning experience as he congratulated her for her emotion in her speech delivery. Standing up next to give the evaluation was DTM Francis Ng for ACS ALB Ken Chan's speech, his clear evaluation was undoubtedly very rewarding.

With the drums rolling the best evaluator went to CC Kelvin Chong, and it rolled again for the best speaker ACB, ALB Ken Chan and with a thunderous drum roll again the Best Table Topics speaker was crowned as ACS, ALB Ken Chan.

What an interesting evening to remember, however we must not forget we had a very young student who walked in between our meeting to observe, Chong See Soon. He gave a good observation remark as he saw it, as he was called upon to say a few words. As the meeting ended, we adjourned to celebrate the birthdays of the month which is celeberated at the first meeting of each month. The members sang and clapped their hands has both DTM Francis Ng and TM Mathew cuts their birthday cakes. All enjoyed the lovely cheese cake with a lots of chit chat. As each person left the place there was satisfaction written over their face with expectation to come again for next meeting on September 25^th 2012.

Signing off,
Mathew Philippose

Meeting #256, Tue, 28 August 2012

The team was here at the Bangunan MCA, in PJ Selatan quite early for our 256th meeting on 28th August 2012. The food caterer of the day, CP Lau has changed to a new stall and the comment on the food was quite good.

Our spontaneous members were helping out in setting up the meeting room. They knew some of the members were not very well and have been "barring" them from taking heavy things. Thank you, caring members.

Our meeting started a little late. Our General Evaluator was late. Without further delaying the meeting, we started by our Assistant Sergeant-At-Arm (ASAA), Toastmaster Kyle Kuah calling for the meeting to order. It was our second meeting of the month, hence, the members read out the second 5 promises of Toastmasters.

The theme of the meeting was "Thriving to Success", created in conjunction with our National Day on 31st August, 2012. The word of the day was "Transform". All members mentioned about the theme of the meeting as well as the word of the day, expressed how much they would like to transform to be better and thriving to success.

The Toastmaster of Evening was Competent Communicator (CC), CP Lau. He started off the meeting by highlighting some of the successes of Toastmasters of District 51. Dr. John Lau is the first Malaysian elected as President of Toastmasters International for term 2012/2013. Our Toastmaster from Penang, Palaniappa Subramaniam was the 2nd place in the International Speech Contest, 2012.

Our Invocation presenter was Competent Communicator, Serena Kong. She used an incident of her car that has broken down to highlight how nice and beautiful to appreciate people that helped us by simply saying "Thank You". Thank you Serena for such meaningful point.

The humor master of the day was none other than our Toastmaster Mathew Philippose. His "funny" body language and tonality telling us the story of why people who jog with a funny movement has definitely brought a laughter to the members.

The meeting moved on to the very interesting session, the project speech session. We have 5 speeches lined up for the members.

Toastmaster Sunny Low has begun the session by delivering his Ice Breaker speech. Why does he use "Sunny" as his Christian name? He always believes that even it is storming now, it doesn't mean that you are not heading to sunshine destination. What a positive guy! He shared with us his study life in college, his experience of getting scholarship as well as how he won the B.Braun Innovation Award. You are great, Sunny! He was also one of the top 5 finalists of a contest hosted by Standard Chartered Bank. He concluded his speech by telling us a line, "Success is not a doorway, it is a staircase".

Toastmaster Kyle Kuah delivered his 4th speech of the Competent Communication Manual. He talked about "Friends". He preferred to have friends that are from different interest groups as this will allow his to learn more things and make his life more colorful. He shared with us one very unique quote to describe friendship, "A stranger stabs you in the front; a friend stab you in the back; a boyfriend stabs you in the heart, but best friends only poke each other with straws.".

Our 3rd speaker was none other than Toastmaster Mathew Philippose. This very experienced Toastmaster had shared some very exciting and scary travelling experiences. With his attractive pitch, rich vocal varieties as well as interesting body language, he caught everybody's attention to listen to his stories. It was so dangerous that his car was turned up-side-down in a road accident. Everybody was holding breath to listen to how he managed to catch his flight when he was locked in a toilet and the flight was to take off in 30 minutes time. Phew.....

One of our senior members, Competent Toastmaster (CTM), Competent Leader (CL) Alwin Chuah has delivered his first speech from the Speaking to Inform manual. Alwin taught us how to be a successful stock trader. After his speech, it was an eye-opener for some of us whom are novice in the stock market. We then knew what is penny stock and what are blue chips. His strategies and methods of "playing" shares were very useful for all of us.

Our last speaker was our President, Advanced Communicator Silver (ACS), Advanced Leader Bronze (ALB), Ken Chan. He delivered his second technical presentation on Multi-Million Ringgit Loan Proposal. He shared with us what are the criteria that the credit committee will look into in approving such big amount loan, such as disposal income, collateral value, borrower's repayment track record, borrower's equity etc. This was obviously a very interesting topic as there were overwhelming questions posted from the floor.

Due to some unforeseen circumstances our General Evaluator Competent Communicator, Advanced Leader Bronze, Mr. SK Lee, came late. He arrived while Alwin was delivering his speech. Members adjourned for a short break before the evaluation session commenced.


Folks are enjoying the refreshment

After the break, the meeting proceed to the Speech Evaluation session. Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM), Francis Ng was the evaluator for our ice breaker presenter. His vast experience in presentation has definitely given Sunny Low some very good learning tips for his next speech.

Kyle Kuah's speech was evaluated by EK Yeo, CC, CL. he has pointed out some of the good points delivered by Kyle and some areas for improvement. We look forward to Kyle's next speech and will see him improve from speech to speech.

Victor Wan, Advanced Communicator Bronze (ACB), ALB evaluated on Mathew's speech. Besides his very attractive presentation, Victor has advised Mathew to move with a purpose on the stage. Too much of movement while presenting may distract the audience. Noted with thanks, Victor.

Julia Leong, ACB, ALB evaluated on Alwin's speech. In general, Alwin's speech has met the objective of the speech as a speech to inform. However, from some of the suggestions that Alwin should look into the notebook for points instead of turning his body to the projector screen.

And, once again, Francis Ng, DTM evaluated on Ken's speech. With informative flip chart and points on the power point, it was commented that the speech was well delivered. The environment and scenario was predefined well so the audience was playing a role as the credit committee.

Mr. general Evaluator also provided his comments and constructive comments to speakers for their improvements. As our club's tradition, we have done a standing ovation to our Ice Breaker Sunny Low. Once again, well done, Sunny!